Chaos Quarter: Imperial Ambitions Read online

  CHAOS QUARTER:

  IMPERIAL AMBITIONS

  David Welch

  Also by David Welch:

  Chaos Quarter

  The Gods’ Day To Die

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the author.

  Copyright © 2015 David Welch

  All rights reserved.

  eBook Cover Design by www.ebooklaunch.com

  Table of Contents

  Mecong Island, Paphlygonia, Lambda Aurigae System, Capellan Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 7/24/2507

  Royal Palace Grounds, Island of Austia, Europa, Imperial Reach, Empire of Europa, Standard Date 7/25/2507

  Elea Station, Paphlygonian Orbit, Lambda Aurigae System, Capellan Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 8/1/2507

  Prezwalski System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 8/7/2507

  Natagoy System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 8/08/2507

  City of Kodee Suur, Atrebar, Khanate of The Uriankhai, Atrebar System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 8/09/2507

  Bombardment Station Cannae, Oothrak System, Just beyond the Imperial–Chaos Quarter Border, Standard Date 8/09/2507

  Prahth’viin System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 8/10/2507

  Porter’s Star System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 8/11/2507

  Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/1/2507

  Bombardment Station Cannae, Lavit Antrano System, Standard Date 9/1/2507

  The Reservation, Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/2/2507

  The Reservation, Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/3/2507

  Naharval System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/3/2507

  The Reservation, Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/4/2507

  The Reservation, Anglesey, Dominion of the Angleseyu, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/4/2507

  Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/4/2507

  The Reservation, Anglesey, Anglesey System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/5/2507

  Somewhere in the Harude System, Chaos Quarter, Standard Date 9/6/2507

  Manx, Aquilae System, Alshain Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 10/12/2507

  City of Burrigen, Manx, Aquilae System, Alshain Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 10/14/2507

  Taylor Valley National Cemetery, East of Cortland, New York, United States of America, Earth, Sol System, Standard Date 10/20/2507

  Mecong Island, Paphlygonia, Lambda Aurigae System, Capellan Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 10/28/2507

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Whoever said you can’t go home again was a fool. One of the defining characteristics of a home is that you return to it again and again and again! And don’t give me crap about being too literal…

  —Joseph Davidson, Collected Sayings, 2082

  There was once a time, back in the days of Old Earth, when people literally marched in the streets to protest the use of genetic engineering. Some thought that eating food with modified genes would sicken them, ignoring the fact that the food they’d been eating for thousands of years was genetically engineered; it had just been done via selective breeding instead of in a lab. Others were worried that genetic manipulation and cloning would screw up Earth’s natural environment. Such worries were so prevalent that to this day there is a law on Earth saying no recreated species may be introduced into Earth’s biome unless its extinction was due to past human action.

  So it’s ironic that this thing the Old Earth folk feared became the key to terraforming other worlds. When scientists transformed worlds, they realized that, thanks to genetic engineering, they didn’t need to be bound to species that currently existed on Earth. They used computers to reengineer the genetic codes of thousands of extinct species, literally running trillions upon trillions of possible combinations (a process that could take five to six years for each species recovered) until they created DNA 99.9999999999999999995 percent identical to the original creatures. They used small modifications to existing species to adapt them to new environments, to make them more adept at surviving in the nutrient-poor soils of newly terraformed words, or to just see what they could do. You ever seen a three-hundred-foot-tall, ten-foot-wide snow-white aspen tree on Earth? Ever see a grove of such trees? No. You’d get fined for importing just one. But on dozens of other Commonwealth worlds you can buy giant quaking aspen seedlings at any home-and-garden store…

  —Excerpt from a speech given by Professor Sato Gundren of Broward University at the “We Need What We Fear” seminar held in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 2483

  Mecong Island, Paphlygonia, Lambda Aurigae System, Capellan Prefect, Free Terran Commonwealth, Standard Date 7/24/2507

  Rex Vahl sat in a sequoia tree. Normally a pilot for the Free Terran Commonwealth’s External Intelligence Division (EID), today he had decided to try his luck at hunting. It wasn’t like he had much else to do. For five months he and his crew had been sitting on Paphlygonia, his homeworld, blissfully bored. Given that he’d walked away from his last assignment with an artificial eye and a slew of nightmares, he wasn’t exactly unhappy with being bored. And he figured if he had to be bored, he could do it in a tree stand in the forest, one trigger pull away from fresh venison.

  Rex himself was a brown-haired man, with lightly tanned skin, green eyes, and a six-foot frame. That frame was now enclosed in a wooden box, one that had been mounted to the side of the sequoia tree by his father fifty years ago. Of course, his father was two inches shorter than him and had built the stand to his dimensions, meaning Rex didn’t have all that much room to move around. He’d already hit his head a half-dozen times. He supposed he could rebuild it, but that sounded like a lot of work, and given that he was only here two or three times a year, it was easier to just hunch.

  A small opening in front of him gave him a view of the open forest in front of him. Massive redwoods dominated it, mature trees stretching two hundred feet into the sky. Above him the trees’ dense branches formed a thick, evergreen canopy, turning the forest floor into a land of eternal dimness. In the small patches where light did get through, tufts of grass shot up.

  At one of those tufts, a bush-antlered deer fed. Eucladoceros was the official name, the kind his teachers had always tried to drive into him when he was a kid. But everybody called them bush-antlered deer. Genetic-recombination computers had figured out and synthesized their DNA nearly two centuries back, rescuing them from extinction so that they could become the scourge of Paphlygonian gardens. They were the biggest plant-eating species on Paphlygonia. Most of the critters here were smaller since each of the thousands of islands that made up this planet only had a limited supply of food. But despite their size, the bush-antlers had thrived, feasting off the lichens of Paphlygonia’s endless, temperate rain forests.

  This one in particular was quite a big one, probably six and a half feet at the shoulder. Its rack was equally impressive. As the name implied, the bush-antlered deer was known for having antlers that looked like the branches of a bush. Though Rex had always thought they seemed more treelike than bushy. Either way, the animal in front of him had an impressive set. They could easily have a five-foot spread, and he could see at least twenty-five
points. It wasn’t often you spotted one this large on Mecong. The bigger bucks did tend to appear on the larger islands. Mecong was maybe thirty miles across. It wasn’t small, but it also wasn’t the type of place where six-foot-tall bucks regularly strutted about.

  He gazed at the beast through the iron sights of his rifle. He’d thought about passing it up, letting it live and breed so there would be more six-foot bucks moseying about the forest a few years from now. But a glance through his spotting scope had revealed loose skin on the underside of the animal’s neck and knobby growths at the base of its antlers, which meant that this was an old deer, past its prime—one of the few lucky enough to make it to seven or eight years of age. So he’d probably already sired a bunch of fawns in past years, fawns that were no doubt on their way to being giants themselves. This knowledge had made his decision for him.

  The old buck kept on grazing. Rex shifted slightly, trying to get a better angle. The deer wasn’t perfectly broadside, but was close enough for a heart-lung shot. Rex took a soft breath, exhaled, and squeezed back on the trigger.

  The rifle bumped back softly against his shoulder as it fired. A muffled bark filled the air as the bullet leaped free. The old buck jerked where it stood as if not sure what had happened. Then, just as abruptly, it fell sideways with a thump. Rex kept an eye on the animal for a moment, readying to finish it off if the first shot had only wounded him.

  The animal’s flanks rose and fell a half-dozen times, each rise less than the last. When its breath finally ceased, Rex leaned back in his stand, his own breath sounding unbearably loud in his ears. It always did that on a hunt. He could feel his heart pumping aggressively, some primitive instinct within him expecting a fight or a struggle or something more. He took several breaths to bleed off the adrenaline and then shouldered his rifle.

  He climbed carefully from the stand, down the trunk of the sequoia, to the forest floor below. He kept his gun out, all too aware that some of the island’s black bears had learned to associate the sound of a gunshot with the thought of food. He paused a few minutes, waiting to see if any arrived. When none did he shouldered the rifle and turned from the kill.

  He returned a moment later on his ATV. Hitched to it was a pallet with a small crane, specifically designed for hunters moving large kills. He maneuvered the ATV into position and then jumped off it. First things first—he held his wrist console over the animal, taking a picture of the downed stag.

  “Send to the conservation guys,” he ordered. The watch-sized panel did so. Down in the town conservation office somebody had no doubt just received the picture, matched it with the license he’d bought last month, and deducted one buck from Mecong’s bush-antlered deer quota.

  Now came the part he didn’t care for. Most of hunting he enjoyed: getting out in the woods, matching wits with an animal, the sudden rush of the kill, the hundreds of pounds of meat for the price of one bullet, the getting out of an overcrowded house full of drama…that stuff was all good. But this part he hated. There was no choice though, not unless he wanted the meat to spoil. So Rex pulled a five-inch knife from his belt and went to work field dressing the animal.

  It was hot, bloody work. The average black-tailed deer, the most common large mammal in this part of Paphlygonia, weighed just under two hundred pounds. A bush-antlered deer could easily weigh two thousand. This meant that the gut pile wasn’t a small mess of offal, but a large and macabre smear. If somebody from one of Earth’s big cities stumbled upon him now he or she would probably mistake the scene for one of those gory horror flicks that young people liked so much. He could just imagine some urbanite’s mind trying to make sense of his bagging the liver and heart for later eating or scooping out all the yards of intestine. It was their loss though. To his mind battered and fried deer heart was one of life’s great pleasures.

  A twig snapped, and his head perked up. With his hands covered in deer blood and a growing pile of organs beside him, he wasn’t exactly in the best of spots. Were a bear or wolf pack around, he’d probably smell more like food than human.

  He swung his rifle around and scanned the area. The sound’s source was quickly located. A tall, upright figure moved through the forest, following the four-wheel trail Rex had taken to the stand. He was a remarkably nondescript man, with a weak jawline; flat, brown hair; and honest-looking eyes. Rex found the last part ironic, given that the man was a midlevel asset handler for the EID. Secrets were his stock and trade. Rex sighed and put the gun back up on his shoulder.

  “Jones,” said Rex as the man approached. “Didn’t know you were on Paphlygonia.”

  “I wasn’t, until this morning,” replied Officer Jones of the External Intelligence Division. “But I wasn’t going to miss out on the Oyster Fest next week. It’s the talk of the prefect.”

  “They’re still doing that?” Rex asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Mmm hmm. And this year’s Oyster Queen is a real looker. Tell me, is that giant clamshell they have her ride down the street for real? Or just a prop?”

  “Damned if I know,” said Rex, moving to the crane. He grabbed a chain and pulled it down toward the deer. “Give me a hand here.”

  Jones walked over, and together they managed to muscle the deer’s midsection off the ground long enough to run the chain underneath. Rex looped it around the beast and then attached it to itself, drawing a tight hold on the carcass. He walked to the crane and pressed a button. The machine lifted, hesitated, and then lifted again as it calibrated to the animal’s mass. The trailer groaned under the weight of the animal, two thousand pounds being the crane’s upper limit. But it held up, dropping the beast on the flat trailer. Rex and Jones strapped it down and then Rex motioned Jones to the passenger seat of the ATV. He took his place at the wheel and brought the vehicle to life.

  “So what’s the mission?” Rex asked as they began the quarter-mile drive back to the house.

  “Nothing I’d want to discuss out here,” replied Jones. “Could be other hunters out today. It is the season.”

  “There is nobody out here but us. My family owns two hundred acres.”

  “Two hundred three, minus the ten acres your mother sold to Mr. Lucius and Mrs. Chakrika Alvadile.”

  Rex couldn’t help but smile at that. Lucius Alvadile née Baliol was his friend and gunner. He was also a former noble of the elite, aristocratic, and horrifically tyrannical Empire of Europa. For a man like Lucius to take his wife’s name…it just made him chuckle. Europan lords were so proud of their long, important-sounding names. Lucius had once been Lucius Alexander Savoy-Habsberg-Baliol, Count of Idoriville-Cabaelon, and son of other people with equally long-winded appellations. And yet he’d tossed it aside in favor of the last name of a former prostitute. Granted, he was in love with and married to the former prostitute. And sure, it made sense and all—no use shouting out the name “Baliol” when the empire had spies about. But it still struck Rex as amusingly off.

  “So it’s all hush-hush then?” asked Rex.

  “That is what we do Officer Vahl.”

  “And apparently ‘we’ also keep close tabs on local real-estate listings.”

  “All land sales are listed publicly. It was less spying and more doing a quick net search.”

  Rex smirked and drove on. The track left the towering woods, entering into an orchard. Fifty years earlier his father had cleared out a two-acre patch, using the redwoods to build the house and the sequoias as firewood. The stumps of the giants were still visible though much more rotten now than they’d been when he was a kid. In between them grew apple and pear trees. They were old now, knotted and mature, but still going strong. Many were loaded down with fruit, not yet ripe, but getting there. The burdened ATV churned past them. The orchard narrowed back into a track, which ran through ten yards of forest.

  After that it opened up again, revealing his childhood/current home. It sat in a small yard, small only because the house filled up most of the space. A three-story A-frame dominated the center of the
house, made of dark-stained redwood and huge windows. His father, an architect, was not the type to do subtle. Smaller wings stuck out on the sides. A large patio stretched across the front of the A-frame, roofed but open.

  And in front of the home, staring upward at the overcast sky, stood Second. Rex sighed, though not at the oddness of her current action. It was more a sigh of relief over the fact that at least this time Second hadn’t left the house without clothes. For a while she’d wondered why they were necessary during the warmer months and had not understood why people insisted she wear them. Second had only recently become human, in the full meaning of the term. For the first ninety-odd years of her existence, she had been a slave to a Hegemon Master. The Perfected Hegemony was a reclusive nation on the other end of Explored Space obsessed with genetic manipulation. Rex wasn’t even sure if their “masters,” the ones running the show, could even be considered truly human anymore. So advanced were their organic technologies that they could literally transfer their brains from one body to another, and had done so with Second. Though, besides having her enhanced linguistic and memory centers, Second was not that different from a “normal” person. But her individuality, her soul, had been suppressed by a tumorlike cortex attached to the back of her brain. For nearly a century, as she was transferred from one body to another, she had existed as nothing but a biological machine. She’d been a perfect servant to the late Ambassador Cody, a master sent out to act as a liaison with the human nations of the Chaos Quarter.

  He’d found her during his last mission to the Quarter and had a surgeon remove the cortex controlling her brain. Second had gone from a slave with no free will to a fully grown woman with no idea on how to use her free will. At first glance she appeared nothing more than your run-of-the-mill, staggeringly beautiful woman. She had been engineered to be enticing to male diplomats, to the point that she even put out more pheromones than most women to help “influence” the minds of the men she had been made to deal with. She was tall, statuesque even. Her hips and breasts swelled magnificently under pretty much any type of clothing, drawing stares from any hetero male. Those were pretty much the only places she had any body fat either. Her face was finely crafted with tanned skin; high cheekbones; sultry lips; and lavender, almond-shaped eyes. Platinum-blond hair cascaded from her head.